Solon Towne and the Meadowlarks

BirdNote^®

Solon Towne and the Meadowlarks

Written by Rick Wright

This is BirdNote.
[Western Meadowlark, ML 516835 – 00:02 ff.]
    Over a century ago, a Nebraska man named Solon Towne began to collect his favorite sounds – the songs of meadowlarks.
[Western Meadowlark, ML 516835 – 00:02 ff.]
    According to his daughters, he’d saunter about their farm with a tuning fork in his hand, listening, then hurry back to his desk to transcribe the songs into musical notes. And to help him remember the songs, he added words.
 [Western Meadowlark, ML 516835 – 00:02 ff.]
One meadowlark, Towne believed, warned farmers: “Hoop la, potato bug!” Another was concerned about the eggs in its well-hidden nest: “Be careful, you’ll break ‘em!”  [ML 210504 :39] One just seemed tired of all that vocalizing: “Singing just as usual.” While another sang his meadowlark heart out to his mate: “You’re a lovely creature!” [Western Meadowlark, ML 516717 :10.]
For a long time, one song eluded Towne, though. Until he discovered that a baker in Omaha by the name of Jay Burns was giving away a picture postcard of a bird with every loaf of bread.
[Western Meadowlark, ML 12732
Suddenly he had it: Towne told everyone he knew that the mystery song – from a meadowlark – translated into English as “Buy your bread from Jay Burns.”
For BirdNote, I’m Mary McCann.
[Western Meadowlark, ML 12732]
###
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York.  Western Meadowlarks: 516835, by Wilbur L. Hershberger; 210504 :30, Bruce Rideout; 516717 by Wilbur L. Hershberger; 12732, by Robert .C. Stein and Robert B Angstadt
BirdNote's theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie
© 2016 Tune In to Nature.org    August 2016   Narrator: Mary McCann

ID#  townes-01-2016-08-09    townes-01

Nebraska Bird Review 32 (1964): 18-28  http://bit.ly/292PfHL